San Jose unions urge pension talks

A day after revised estimates slashed the city's estimated pension bill for next year, dozens of San Jose city workers and other local officials gathered Friday outside City Hall demanding that the mayor drop plans for a ballot measure to shrink retirement costs.

"The city's fiscal-emergency house of cards has been toppled," said Robert Sapien, president of the San Jose Firefighters union, which along with other employee groups wants the city to negotiate pension changes rather than seek to impose them through a ballot measure they say violates their contracts. "We are eager to get to work to achieve reasonable and legal pension reform."

In May, Reed and his allies on the City Council wanted to declare a fiscal emergency and let voters decide about a package of pension reforms, noting that San Jose's employee retirement bill has more than tripled in a decade to $245 million and may top $400 million in four years.

The mayor and council had delayed that vote until Tuesday to allow time for talks with unions on the plan. But on Thursday, actuaries for the city's police and firefighter retirement plan said next year's cost would be lower than this year's and $55 million below their estimates a few months ago. That news shaved the city's budget deficit for next year from $80 million to $25 million and prompted Reed to put the brakes on a fiscal emergency and election.

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But Reed maintained Friday that the city still needs a ballot measure on pension reform because retirement costs remain too high and employee offers don't shrink them enough.

"The good news is it's not going up, but the bad news is it's still huge," Reed said, adding that "we still have to pay $230 million," much more than the $73 million figure a decade ago.

But employees said they have offered concessions that would close next year's budget gap and that the mayor was seeking a ballot measure in a quest to challenge legal protections for public worker pensions. Joining them in demands to negotiate a pension solution were Santa Clara County supervisors Dave Cortese and George Shirakawa Jr., both former San Jose councilmen, and Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Cupertino.

"Instead of working with them," Fong said, "he's chosen to make them the enemy."